Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
July 9, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Jay Barney: The result for Despicable Me is truly remarkable. The size of this opening is shocking and validates something I have been harping about for the last several weeks. The number of family-friendly kid’s films should increase. The market is clearly there. Especially on holiday weekends, but also during regular openings, going to the movies has become an event. Bringing the family to movies like this is the definition of a family outing. During the 4th of July families with kids turned out in droves to take it in, and Universal’s hot streak continues in a very big way.
To beat the tracking estimates by one third is awesome, especially considering this was a period everyone was focused on. I’m sure Universal would have been pleased with a little over $100 million, but numbers like this are outstanding. Joining Transformers Dark of the Moon, the Original Transformers, and Spider-Man 2 as the largest Independence Day openings ever is impressive. I think by the end of this discussion we will have used up all of the positive descriptors to Despicable Me’s start. Jaw dropping? Unbelievable? Eye popping?
I think what the story will quickly become is just how high this film can go. The $76 million budget is also an intriguing figure. Even with marketing costs the real price tag here can’t be much more than $150 million. If you take in the international gross Despicable Me 2 has already DOUBLED that figure. It is a juggernaut and will be over the $400 million mark globally very soon. To be talking about those amounts so quickly into its run is a mark of just how popular this film is.
Edwin Davies: I was really surprised that, going into the holiday, people were estimating that Despicable Me 2 would "only" make $100 million or so over the five days. That really seemed to be low-balling it to me, considering just how much awareness there has been for the movie in the last few months, and particularly in the last two weeks. Universal did an amazing job making sure everyone knew that this movie was coming out, with ads and promotional deals coming from every direction, but more importantly they played to the strengths of the franchise. They knew they had a first film that did spectacularly well considering its relative lack of pedigree, a film that has built an even bigger audience over time and has sold a hell of a lot of merchandise, and that all they needed to do was remind people what they liked so much about the first film and they would be golden. They did that a year ago by releasing a teaser trailer which was just the Minions singing and messing around, and they continued to do it in all the advertising by emphasizing the Minions, who were the breakout stars of the first film, and giving a general sense of the plot. But most importantly, the message of the marketing was: More Minions, Yay! And they hit that message home very well and often, presenting the film as basically the only viable option this weekend that could appeal to the whole family. It's just an amazing job all round.
Bruce Hall: Good animated family features have been slim pickings so far this year. Escape from Planet Earth was a modest success, with audiences giving it a solid "meh". The Croods opened well in March, ultimately performing to the point where people started talking about a franchise. Epic probably did not get anyone fired. And Monsters University was always going to be the first animated release of the year to come with serious advance expectations. That gives us a little less than one significant animated family feature a month since March, and only one marquee title. I don't have any statistics with me but I do have a couple of kids, and although they do not believe it, I also used to be one. Tots are usually aware of these films before their parents are, so I have to believe here's space for more activity in this space earlier in the year.
Then again, if you mess around and over saturate the market, it makes events like OPENING JULY FOURTH WEEKEND so much less worthy of all caps. And didn't Universal make this an event? The only thing that got the wee ones to shut up about Monsters University was this - and we don't even have cable. I can tell you firsthand the marketing push behind this it paid off big. Universal is on a winning streak right now, and their strategy for this awkwardly titled movie just extends their dominance.
I suppose this is where they ruin it by dropping six more Fast and Furious movies by 2016, but we can talk about that when it happens.
Reagen Sulewski: It is beyond amusing to me that a lot of the post-4th writeups have taken the tone of Despicable Me "upsetting" The Lone Ranger, when anyone paying the slightest bit of attention for the past month could see that this was in the works. The first Despicable movie was not just a sizable hit in first run but a *monstrous* hit on video. I estimate that my child alone saw it approximately 357 times - and here's the important part - and I never really got that tired of it either. Give parents something that they won't hate themselves for seeing with their children and you will make immense amounts of money.
Max Braden: Honestly, my memory of the first Despicable Me was that it was pretty boring. Gru is a boring character. But my takeaway was that I loved the minions and would have liked to see more of them. This movie, or at least the advertising for it, delivered on that. Gru seems to be no more than a foil for the Three Stooges-esque behavior from the minions, and this movie probably could have just been called Adorable Minions and have made as much money. The promotional crossover I saw was everywhere, and audiences ate it up.
David Mumpower: Before replying in earnest, I went back into BOP's brobdingnagian archive to examine our comments about Despicable Me. At the time, several of us noted the same premise. The ubiquity of the Minions proved to be a marketing masterstroke. There were seemingly innocuous tie-ins as disparate as Denny's Grand Slam breakfasts (no, really) and Best Buy sales circulars. At the time, there was conjecture about how much money Universal was wasting for a solo animated movie release. As we stated then, the strategy employed was to differentiate Minions from all the other potential toy dolls debuting in movies in 2010. Over the week of July 4th, those seeds bore fruit.
With regards to the film's box office, I think Reagen's point is well taken. I said a few weeks ago that I thought Despicable Me 2 could wind up the #2 film this summer. I am disgusted by the recent exploitation of Disney's struggles via the pretense that The Lone Ranger had been the favorite. I didn't know anyone who thought it was the favorite last weekend. The Lone Ranger failed enough on its own. We don't need to invent stuff for which its creators should apologize.
As for Max's wrongness about Despicable Me, I have torches and pitchforks for all of our readers to grab on their way to that dank warren he thinks is a hidey-hole.
Kim Hollis: I was really surprised at one point last week when I saw someone say something along the lines of "I think people are really underestimating Despicable Me 2." I have no idea how anyone who has been paying attention would have believed this movie would be anything less than huge. Maybe if you don't have kids, I guess, but I don't have any and I was fully aware of this movie in every possible way. The marketing was brilliant, and the first film was one of those that snuck up on you with its charm. Yes, this is a huge success but to say that this is any sort of upset or surprise just means that you're out of touch completely. I guess this shows us just how little a lot of studio execs understand audience behavior these days.
Kim Hollis: Based on what you have witnessed this week, do you believe The Minions Movie is a guaranteed blockbuster or the beginning of the end (aka "too much of a good thing") like Shrek 3?
Jay Barney: It is way too early to tell at this point. All we know is that Despicable Me II did very well this weekend, and it is likely to be a box office force for the next couple of weeks. The money equation almost ensures speculation of how well Minions will do and that is fine. Universal is certainly banking on it being huge, as they have it slotted for a Christmas 2014 release.
Brett Ballard-Beach: In terms of analogies, will it receive a boost similar to what Iron Man 3 received in the wake of The Avengers (although even that is flawed as Despicable Me 2 seems to be receiving a lot more love than Iron Man 2 did)? I think that The Minions Movie is going to be huge. Not DM2 huge, but why carp? It also may be very good. But I always think it's a bad move when the supporting characters get their own movies. Minions make good sidekicks, and as I understand, the directors packed them into every scene they could in DM2, but there is still a world of difference between that and a movie where they are the focus/protagonists solely. I guess the quality of the film will be key, and if it is lacking, it could negatively impact DM3's performance whenever that rears its head.
Edwin Davies: The idea of a Minions movie, to me, sounds like something that should go direct to DVD. Not a terrible idea given the success of the first two films, and one that would certainly do well with the target audience, but not something that could sustain a whole feature film. Basically, it is to Despicable Me what Planes is to Cars. There's always the chance that the film itself turns out to be pretty good and justifies a theatrical release, and everyone involved with the Despicable Me series has so far managed to keep the quality pretty high, but if anything was going to negatively affect the franchise in the long-run, it's probably a Minions only spin-off, which might seem like too much of an obvious cash-grab and spoil what so far is a fun distraction in a broader story. However, it'll be a pretty sizable cash-grab, and I expect that the Minions movie will do very well, especially if they keep the costs down, even if it runs the risk of hurting the series.
Bruce Hall: I agree with Edwin on the whole direct-to-DVD route, personally. Supporting characters are there to do a very specific job and taking them out of that role often weakens them. A big screen flameout by the Minions could seriously damage the whole franchise. As risk averse a place as Hollywood is, part of me has trouble seeing it happen in theaters. Then again, Universal has been killing it for a little over a year now, and I understand they recently filled the plumbing in all their buildings with hot and cold running champagne.
When a studio has a hot hand, lots of crazy stuff gets greenlighted. It could happen, I'm just not so sure it would be as good an idea as it seems right now...in the middle of the "morning after" success hangover.
Reagen Sulewski: I understand all these arguments against a Minions movie, but there's no reason to think that Universal hasn't already considered why they might not work in a conventional film, and there's no reason to expect that it'll be just Despicable Me minus Gru. I think they might take a chance or two with this narratively, and possibly produce something quite out there. Not to mention that we live in a world where Smurfs 2 can be made, so why not this?
Max Braden: A fourth movie might start to feel like too much after consuming a third movie, but right now I'd plow ahead with a Minions-only movie. Puss in Boots didn't earn the level of its main Shrek series movies did, but it still earned more than four times its production budget (worldwide), and I think the minions have a more universal appeal than Puss did. I don't have any doubt that the storytellers would be creative enough to turn them into a sustainable full-length movie.
David Mumpower: I agree with Reagen regarding the decision to create a Minions movie. Universal knows the risks better than anyone just as they knew a sequel to a standalone film, Despicable Me, was dangerous. They cleverly plotted a course to turn the bad guy face with that project. I expect a Minions movie to be the inverse of Despicable Me, which featured a lot of Gru and a little of the Minions. The formula will undoubtedly succeed. The question is whether it does follow the downward trajectory of Shrek, a brand DreamWorks Animation destroyed by going to the well far too often sans any new ideas. Since Universal is two for two with Minions thus far, I see every reason to give them the benefit of the doubt with regards to movie quality. As for box office, the Minions are the closest this generation has to old school Looney Toons. Kids eat them up and rightfully so. They are adorable. The Minions Movie is going to be hugely massively monstrously big. If it were opening any other time than December, I would give it a chance of usurping The Avengers.
Kim Hollis: I worry a little bit that it's too much of a good thing, but that doesn't matter too much on a monetary level at this point. The studio knows that Minions will bring big bucks, so the project gets a rubber stamp. With all that said, I really would love to see them give the Minions a series of shorts rather than a feature. I agree that they're the modern-day equivalent of Looney Tunes in a lot of ways, so taking them through a series of misadventures in five or six minute stories would work really well.